IDA Receives
"Spirit of the Mission Award"

Thank you Harriette, Lisa and the members and staff of Animal Protection New Mexico for this special award.

Itís especially meaningful to us because it comes from an organization whose work we hold in such high regard.

Throughout the Coulston campaign, I was continuously amazed at APNM's effectiveness and good work.

When we needed political support, Harriette, Lisa and the other staff were there to mobilize APNM members to call their congressional representatives, or better yet, confront them directly at public meetings.

When we needed documents from the federal government, APNM was there with experienced legal help and as a partner on a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

APNM also mobilized key support at the state level, including getting legislation passed to removed the exemption for research labs like Coulston from New Mexico's anti-cruelty laws, and securing the ongoing investigation by Attorney General Patricia Madrid into the possible misuse of public funds at the lab.

So you can see that this IDA victory and this award are shared by many organizations, top among them APNM. Also deserving of credit and our deep gratitude are IDAís members who have supported us throughout this long, nearly decade-long campaign, and the Animal Welfare Institute and the Doris Day Animal League for their critical lobbying assistance on Capitol Hill.

Finally, we would not be celebrating this total victory over the Coulston Foundation here tonight were it not for the incredible generosity of the Arcus Foundation, and its benefactor Jon Stryker, and the amazing courage of Carole Noon of the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care. They have stepped in to do what previously seemed unfathomable – provide sanctuary to an unbelievable number of chimpanzees – 266 - and 61 monkeys as well. It is a formidable challenge, and we are deeply grateful to them for giving the long saga of the Coulston Foundation an impossibly happy ending.

While I am personally honored to accept this award on behalf of In Defense of Animals, I must acknowledge that it is really the tireless efforts and tenacious work of IDA's research director Eric Kleiman that deserves credit for this victory.

It is because of Eric that IDA cultivated and maintained the network of whistleblowers inside the lab that was so critical to our success. Through Eric's impeccable research, IDA gained credibility within the scientific community, with the media, and within the regulatory agencies that took action against Coulston based on information that Eric provided.

When Eric began work on this campaign in 1994, Fred Coulston had been experimenting on primates – human and non-human – for at least 50 years. He didn't know it at the time, but old Fred had met his match in Eric Kleiman.

In closing, I'd like to accept this award in memory of Donna, a chimpanzee who died at the foundation several years ago.

Many of you may be familiar with Donnaís story. She spent nearly three decades as a successful "breeder" for the Coulston Foundation, giving birth to 14 babies in 26 years. Each of these infants was ripped from her breast at an unbearably early age, usually at birth. Donna died in 1999 during her last pregnancy, after suffering from massive infection, the result of carrying a large dead fetus in her womb for up to two months.

Ironically, Coulston had used a photo of Donna and one of her babies on its website, paying lip service to the debt the lab owed the chimpanzee subjects of its experiments.

No gratitude was shown to Donna, however, as she was left to rot, literally from the inside out, without treatment until it was far too late.

Donna serves as a symbol of a research industry blinded by indifference and denial. Her life and death, and the lives and deaths of all the other chimpanzees who died so painfully and senselessly at the Coulston Foundation, are the reason we must continue our fight.

Over the last six years, more than 400 chimpanzees have been retired from research, but 1300 remain in labs.

IDA vows to continue the fight until every last one of these individuals is rescued from the hopeless despair of biomedical research and given the chance at the peace and sanctuary they so deserve.

We know that APNM will be with us for the hard work that lies ahead, and we thank you again for your dedication and the honor of this very special award.